


and darling i’m lost (i heard you whispering)

by softhearted



Series: close your eyes [1]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I lied, Panic Attacks, and laurel too obviously, basically frank is cool, but barely fluff, but they're slightly less cool now, god im bad at tags, like wait, there is mentions of them having sex, there isn't any fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 05:35:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3679881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softhearted/pseuds/softhearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She’s at Frank’s house, and she killed someone, and she doesn’t know what to do so she knocks seven times and spins around and wants to walk away but she doesn’t, because he opens the door and he’s all sharp lines and edges and shadows, and he’s not wearing a shirt, and he looks sleepy and he says her name not softly but gently, like she’s a scared animal that he needs to coax into coming closer and maybe she is, maybe that’s all she’s ever been."</p>
<p>or: laurel freaks out. frank is there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and darling i’m lost (i heard you whispering)

**Author's Note:**

> prepare: this is a one big run on sentence and if overuse of commas annoys you, i think you should leave before you start planning my murder. 
> 
> i wrote this a long time ago and kind of haven't looked at it since and it's kind of unfinished but not really. 
> 
> full warnings at the end
> 
> title from broadripple is burning by margot and the nuclear so and so’s 
> 
> also i guess this could be considered au since laurel actually became fucking self-confident and the murder helped her find herself to the point of her just being goddamn fantastic but anyway just fill in the blanks yourself i guess

She’s at Frank’s house, and she killed someone, and she doesn’t know what to do so she knocks seven times and spins around and wants to walk away but she doesn’t, because he opens the door and he’s all sharp lines and edges and shadows, and he’s not wearing a shirt, and he looks sleepy and he says her name not softly but _gently_ , like she’s a scared animal that he needs to coax into coming closer and maybe she is, maybe that’s all she’s ever been.

‘ _Laurel?_ ’,  again, like he can’t believe she’s there and you know what, maybe he really can’t, because she screwed up and she hasn’t talked to Kahn in _weeks_ and everything just got so busy, and then Sam fell and then Sam got his head bashed in with the trophy and isn’t it fucking ironic that she’s here and he’s dead?

Frank is closer, now, and she’s sitting on the porch and he’s right in front of her, kneeling. His hands are cupping her head and it feels like he’s squeezing her neck, and she breathes but there’s no oxygen, like her body doesn’t want to take it, like her body is denying the fucking air because honestly, does she still deserve that? She wonders if this is how Michaela felt, cornered, like a deer caught in headlights, like she couldn’t _breathe_.

Frank speaks, ‘ _Laurel, talk to me_ ’, and he looks so worried and Laurel feels so guilty because she killed someone, and there’s nothing else going on, and she kissed Frank first, the first time, and she said it was mutual and never happening again but the truth is she kissed him first because when she was seventeen, her mother told her that love doesn’t wait around, baby, but sometimes love doesn’t go away. And she’s not in love with Frank, but she wonders if maybe one day she might be, because he’s all smirks and strong arms but he’s also soft, and that’s what she needs.

They’re inside, then, and Laurel is on the couch and Frank is in front of her, still, and he’s holding a glass of water but she’s shaking too much to hold it, she’s shaking too much to bring it to her lips so he does it for her, hand on the back of her head, glass tilted, and she gulps because her mouth is dry and then the glass is empty and Frank gets up to do something, get another one, probably, but all she can think of is him walking away and leaving so she grabs his wrist and looks up at him—

(‘Don’t—please—you can’t, you can’t—don’t leave, you can’t leave, just— _please_.’)

—and he nods. And he stays.

‘I fucked up,’ she says, and she keeps repeating it, like a mantra, like something she can’t forget because maybe this is the only thing keeping her sane, the fact that she can admit that she fucked up. ‘We’re not—We didn’t mean to, we didn’t—’

Frank sits down next to her and pulls her into his lap, and she feels like that should be sexual but it’s not, and she curls up against him and he caresses her hair and he says _I know_ and _sssh, I know, calm down. It’s going to be alright_ and it sounds so easy when he says it like that, when he says it like they didn’t kill someone, like she hasn’t been tormented by nightmares for days, like she doesn’t wake up thinking it’s her, rolled into an old rug and burned. Sometimes she wakes up and she swears there’s still dirt and blood under her nails.

‘We’re all going to jail, aren’t we,’ she whispers throatily, all trembling hands and shivers. Her mouth is still dry, and she pictures herself in ill-fitting orange clothes and weekly phone calls to her mother—would her mother even want to speak to her? To a killer?

‘No,’ Frank shushes, hand on her cheek, and it feels good, and Laurel doesn’t think she deserves that, right now, so she cries. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

‘We’re all monsters, now,’ she breathes, terror vibrating through her body. Frank holds her tighter, like he’s afraid she’s going to fall apart and she might, because Laurel feels like it too, like she might not be made of porcelain but there are cracks in her carefully put up façade of _no one can break me_ that feel a whole lot like she is done for.

‘You’re not a monster,’ he tells her. She doesn’t know how many times he repeats it, but it’s a lot of times, and he keeps kissing her forehead in between every few and she feels like she’s not as much falling apart as she’s crumbling, all cobble-stoned walls and she doesn’t think Frank knows how it feels to be like this, to be all tongue and no teeth, all door and no keys, to bend your limbs until you think they could fit into an exhale.

They sit for hours, and she calms down, and she’s silent, and still, and she doesn’t know if Frank is asleep but when she looks at him, he’s looking at her with an unreadable expression and all she can think about is _I’m sorry_ and _I’m not a killer_ and _I shouldn’t have come here_.

‘Don’t say that,’ —and his voice sounds rough, like he’s the one that spent the night crying, and Laurel feels like he might have because there’s a broken girl in his lap and he didn’t sign up for this when she kissed him, did he?

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, again, and she means it. ‘You—I shouldn’t have dumped all of this on you, and I—’

Again, ‘ _Don’t say that_ ,’ with the rough edges and the strong, determined way he looks at her, and he kisses her forehead and she thinks that maybe, maybe this can work out if they do it right.

‘You’re safe here,’ he says, ‘and when you’re like that, you come here, you come to me, and you let me take care of you.’ It’s an order, more than anything, but she doesn’t mind, because he wants her to come to him, he wants her to _come to him_ , and he wants her to come to him even with clothes on, even with burdens and crushed dreams and even with the dead man they burned and buried so she nods, and she breaths out a hoarse _yeah, okay, yes_ and he smiles, and maybe she cries, again, because she killed a man and she might not have pushed him from the stairs, or held the murder weapon, but she was there, and he tried to choke Rebecca and Wes was the one that hit him and really, if he hadn’t done it, wouldn’t she have? It was only a matter of time, and they’re all killers now.

‘I want you to tell me what happened,’ Frank says, and her eyes flutter shut because she can’t look at him, and she can’t do this, but she opens her mouth anyway.

‘We went to the house,’ she starts, but he interrupts her, lips on her cheek.

‘Not that. I know that. I want you to tell me what happened _tonight_.’

She doesn’t know if this is easier, if talking about this is less hard because this doesn’t involve talking about the blood in Rebecca’s mouth, and Connor’s frantic laugh that still haunts her, and the way Michaela cried, and the smell of a burning body and before she knows it, she’s crying again, and Frank is talking—

(‘You don’t have to, you don’t have to, come on, sssh, it’s going to be alright, Laurel, come on.’)

—but she doesn’t hear what he’s saying because they killed someone, and how is she ever going to get through this?

‘I keep—I keep _seeing_ him,’ she whimpers, hiding her face in his neck, ‘he’s everywhere, and he’s dead, and I dream about it— _every night_. He’s always there. And—and Kahn keeps calling, and I don’t know what to do because I liked him, I really did, but how do you tell someone you can’t go on a date because you killed someone, and now you’re doubting everything you’ve ever done and felt? And honestly, I don’t even want to go on a date with him because whenever I’m with him all I can think of is you, and you, and you and you and you and everything he does is _him_ , and that’s too far away from you for me to even enjoy it, and I wanted to like him because I wanted to be safe, and I wanted to look at him and feel the way I do when I look at you but I don’t, and I killed someone, and when I look at you I feel like you might not even care, like you would still kiss me even if I had been Wes, holding the trophy, or if I had been Michaela, pushing him over the railing, and I don’t _know_ , and I don’t know why I came here or why I thought you would care because I keep telling you that it’s nothing but it _is_ , it’s a lot, and sometimes I worry that it’s too much, too much for everything, because you’re _you_ and I killed someone and I keep seeing a dead man when I’m asleep and I had to do exams, and I don’t even know if I passed any of them because I couldn’t stop thinking about fires and trash bags full of remains and the look on his face when he tried to choke Rebecca and sometimes I wake up and I feel like it’s me, like it was me who laid there with his hands around my neck and I don’t know how I can walk around knowing that we did that, and I came to you because you always know what to do, even when I don’t, and, and—’

‘Laurel, stop, it’s okay, it’s _okay_ , you’re here now, you’re with me now,’ —and he sounds so _good_ , so sure and all Laurel can think of is one leg over his shoulder on the table and him inside her with slow, deliberate strokes, and later, skirt hiked up panties aside on the Keating’s front porch, two fingers inside, and that was all about her, wasn’t it? He didn’t get off, then, there, on the porch. It was just her, coming undone, and him swallowing all the little gasps and moans coming out of her mouth with his lips covering hers, and this is exactly the same and exactly the opposite, all at the same time. Because this is her coming undone, and this is Frank, slow and deliberate, and when Laurel was fifteen she got fucked by Cody Maharani on the backseat of his SUV and it hurt, and she thought it was supposed to feel like that because everyone always said it would, wouldn’t it? And Kahn, Kahn had been slow, but not deliberate, just slow, just soft and slow and it was good, but it wasn’t _Frank_ , and bloody fucking hell, _had she fallen for him already_?

She looks at him, and he’s all hard planes and facial hair, and she says ‘ _I didn’t know, I thought I was just your—your student of the month_ ,’ and the words taste bitter in her mouth because that’s what his girlfriend had said, wasn’t it? Which meant that he’d had other students, a lot of other students. Too much other students for her to worry about.

‘You’re not,’ he says, and he sounds so sincere she’s certain she has broken, now. ‘You’re not, I promise you. I don’t—I don’t do _this_ with… _shit,_ okay—I haven’t done this, with any other student, not even with any other girl, I just haven’t, okay?’

She laughs, more hysterical than genuine, says, ‘Well, I don’t think any of your other girls killed a man and came to you while having a mental breakdown,’ and when Frank chuckles, she thinks _yeah, maybe, if we learn to breathe together, if we learn to fit, this might work out._

He brushes the hair out of her face, later, when they’re in his bed and they haven’t done anything, because Frank said no, and Frank said _not like this, I don’t want to do it like this, not when you’re not sure, I need you to be sure_ and Laurel had said _I’m sure_ and he had said _I want to, I want you, but not—not when I can’t be sure this is you talking, and not the breakdown, and_ — and Laurel had kissed him, softly, and had nodded and had said _yes, I know, I know_ and he had kissed her back, not softly but _gentle_ , and this time, she didn’t feel like an animal needing to be coaxed closer, she felt like she belonged, like this was good, _better_ even.

He put a hand on the side of her neck and she panicked, stepped back, breathing ragged, a tremble of _not there, not there_ and Frank frowned before his face cleared out because _of course_ and he had taken her hand and lead her to the bed and now they’re here, her head on his chest and the constant beat of his heart filling her ears.

She has a nightmare that night, and she’s disappointed, but of course, Frank did not magically heal everything, he did not magically make her better so she wiggles out of his grip and goes to the bathroom, cold water in her face and she wonders how the hell she got here, how the hell she ended up at this college, with this man, and this murder, and when she looks at herself in the mirror, she looks wrecked, like she got run over by a train at least five times, and her hair is a mess, and she wonders _how the hell can he still want me when I’m like this_ and she doesn’t realise she said that out loud, and then Frank is leaning against the doorpost, all frowns and ‘when are you going to believe I’m not just in this for the sex?’ and she shrugs, says ‘It’s and idea I still need to get used to,’ and he looks at her like she’s worth so much more than someone who burned a corpse.

**Author's Note:**

> > there are mentions of them fucking  
> > there are mentions of a (canonical) murder (surprise)  
> > basically this story is one rlly long panic attack and the run-on sentences kind of make it feel like one too (at least, if your panic attacks feel the same as mine) so if you're easily triggered by that, i'd advise you don't read it. take care of yourself!


End file.
